[Ekaros]

Or postal vote... Like how would you ever secure such system to acceptable level. Maybe it is barely acceptable in limited scale. But in general it seems open to exploitation and something that would only be used in countries without real democracy.

[mantas]

My country does have postal vote and I do trust it. This is how we run it:

- mail-in is limited to municipality buildings

- mail-in is limited to wednesday-thursday in a week leading up to the election day

- you can go to any municipality regardless of your legal address

- you have to show your ID to get voting papers

- election officials and community supervisors are present in voting hall

- votes are counted along with normal votes after polling station closes on sunday

[Ekaros]

I don't call that postal voting, but early voting. Entirely separate system.

[mantas]

Fair enough. Early voting does solve most (if not all) of the issues that pure postal voting solves though.

[Ekaros]

Yeah, and I don't have anything against it as custody of votes is clears as is who was the voter. On other hand systems where you just put ballot in regular mail or some box without oversight and verification is done by signature... No words...

[amanaplanacanal]

How would you corrupt a postal election without getting caught? Maybe you could get a handful of bad votes in, but I don’t know how you could do it at scale.

[mantas]

A frequent schema in my country is to buy votes from local drunks. Go to a local bar with minivan. Grab a bunch of people, drive them to polling station, drive them back, buy beer and give some change.

This doesn't scale that much because you can't verify the vote and you're limited to few days. It's pretty easy to spot it too. Other politics' support is on the lookout for returning cars and scout cheap bars too.

Now move this schema to postal voting. You've plenty of time to buy voting ballots off drunks. And you can fill them in yourself. It's much harder to spot too.

[dogleash]

The problem at scale is that you no longer have a secret ballot.

[amanaplanacanal]

Where I live there are nested envelopes. The outside envelope is associated with you, but the inner envelope that has your vote is not. So they can see that you voted, but not how you voted.

[mantas]

Reading how last US presidential election was caught... You could get hold of someone else's ballot. No need to show your ID to cast in your vote.

[amanaplanacanal]

That only works if the real voter doesn’t show up.

[mantas]

Given the usual turnout, there's a pretty good chance...